Should Kerr do the 1500/5k double in Paris?

Peach Pit wrote:

John Wesley Harding wrote:

I’ll be honest, I didn’t read the full OP at first. Now that I see how I was mentioned, I feel like I have to argue that I think there’s more separating our perspective than just 10-12 years’ age difference, or whatever. I’m 31, which means I was 11 when Bekele started winning track golds and setting WRs, 12 when El Guerrouj ran his final race. I was 6 when Haile was at his absolute best. I wasn’t born when Coe, Cram, and “that other British guy who ran around that time” (to paraphrase you in a recent post) were all practically done. But when I was in middle school I was reading “The Perfect Mile” by Neal Bascomb, about Bannister, Landy, Santee and their quests to break 4:00; when I was riding the bus to track meets when I was 15 I was reading Peter Snell’s autobiography “No Bugles, No Drums,” etc., etc. Being a true student of the sport (or literally anything!) means doing due diligence in studying the history and trying to put everything in an objective historical context. Am I perfect at that?—Hell no, how could I be? But I make an honest effort.

I'd like to think I'm a true student of the sport, but maybe I'm not. I don't have enough interest in stuff like the Coe/Cram/Ovett rivalry to memorize who won which medals and who ran what times. There are things I remember from reading about it/watching those races that have stuck with me, like one of them ran 3:46 with a crazy kick to set a longstanding WR, and I think it was Cram, but the quality of the performance matters SO much more to me than which one of them did it. Really what stuck with me from them was that it completely changed my beliefs on why white guys couldn't compete in distance events. Before learning about it, I thought Africans were just genetically better at running, but after finding out that 3 British guys from 40 years ago were better than any American ever (this was in 2020), I realized that it was more of an environmental thing than a genetic thing, and I know that belief still comes through in my posts today. I think that's even the argument I was making when I said "Coe and Cram and that other British guy from around then". I stand by the argument I was making, and no one has given me a convincing argument against it in the years that I've been making it.

But while I don't have much interest in Coe/Cram/Ovett, I have gone through thousands of pages on Letsrun (that's the 10 year difference btw, reading books vs reading online) by searching "Rupp" or "Webb" or "Simpson" or "Bekele" or "El G" or any other top runner from the last 25 years (plus any decent American), sorting from oldest to newest, and clicking through page after page because I loved learning what it was like to follow those athletes through the peaks and lulls in their careers. Historical context doesn't get much more objective than that. You also get to experience crazy shifts in opinion, I know it was jarring to me seeing how often Teg used to get mentioned before Rupp won silver, and now he's never brought up. I don't do it for pre-90s guys because it's just a bunch of posts speculating about how much faster an old guy could've run (the classic "Ryun is a 3:25 guy in todays spikes").

I thought the main difference is that you've seemingly been studying the sport since I was born (I'm 21), and I started following it 4 years ago, so I just haven't had the time to pick up as much historical knowledge/context as you, particularly pre-Geb era. I mentioned you specifically because once I argued that Kipchoge was better than Bekele and your argument changed my mind, and then last year I argued Bekele wouldn't beat Jakob in a championship 5k, and your argument made me completely rethink it, and I think last year I said something about Nuguse having the best American season ever, and you made me realize how great Steve Scott was back in the early 80s. Basically I was just using you as the wise old guy knocking some perspective into the dumb young kid, but idk now I've been thinking and maybe I don't care all that much about the history of the sport, and really only care about the old parts insofar as it relates to the modern day sport. I am bored to tears anytime Billy Mills gets brought up because Rupp would blow his doors off, but guys like Ryun and Bikila are super cool because I feel like they'd still be competitive today (and I support all barefoot runners).

Anyway, with all that aside, how many sub-3:29 runners have run the 5k at Worlds/the Olympics and not medaled? El G, Lagat, Jakob, Katir, and Farah all did. Idk of anyone else who tried it.

Peach Pit wrote:

John Wesley Harding wrote:

I’ll be honest, I didn’t read the full OP at first. Now that I see how I was mentioned, I feel like I have to argue that I think there’s more separating our perspective than just 10-12 years’ age difference, or whatever. I’m 31, which means I was 11 when Bekele started winning track golds and setting WRs, 12 when El Guerrouj ran his final race. I was 6 when Haile was at his absolute best. I wasn’t born when Coe, Cram, and “that other British guy who ran around that time” (to paraphrase you in a recent post) were all practically done. But when I was in middle school I was reading “The Perfect Mile” by Neal Bascomb, about Bannister, Landy, Santee and their quests to break 4:00; when I was riding the bus to track meets when I was 15 I was reading Peter Snell’s autobiography “No Bugles, No Drums,” etc., etc. Being a true student of the sport (or literally anything!) means doing due diligence in studying the history and trying to put everything in an objective historical context. Am I perfect at that?—Hell no, how could I be? But I make an honest effort.

I'd like to think I'm a true student of the sport, but maybe I'm not. I don't have enough interest in stuff like the Coe/Cram/Ovett rivalry to memorize who won which medals and who ran what times. There are things I remember from reading about it/watching those races that have stuck with me, like one of them ran 3:46 with a crazy kick to set a longstanding WR, and I think it was Cram, but the quality of the performance matters SO much more to me than which one of them did it. Really what stuck with me from them was that it completely changed my beliefs on why white guys couldn't compete in distance events. Before learning about it, I thought Africans were just genetically better at running, but after finding out that 3 British guys from 40 years ago were better than any American ever (this was in 2020), I realized that it was more of an environmental thing than a genetic thing, and I know that belief still comes through in my posts today. I think that's even the argument I was making when I said "Coe and Cram and that other British guy from around then". I stand by the argument I was making, and no one has given me a convincing argument against it in the years that I've been making it.

But while I don't have much interest in Coe/Cram/Ovett, I have gone through thousands of pages on Letsrun (that's the 10 year difference btw, reading books vs reading online) by searching "Rupp" or "Webb" or "Simpson" or "Bekele" or "El G" or any other top runner from the last 25 years (plus any decent American), sorting from oldest to newest, and clicking through page after page because I loved learning what it was like to follow those athletes through the peaks and lulls in their careers. Historical context doesn't get much more objective than that. You also get to experience crazy shifts in opinion, I know it was jarring to me seeing how often Teg used to get mentioned before Rupp won silver, and now he's never brought up. I don't do it for pre-90s guys because it's just a bunch of posts speculating about how much faster an old guy could've run (the classic "Ryun is a 3:25 guy in todays spikes").

I thought the main difference is that you've seemingly been studying the sport since I was born (I'm 21), and I started following it 4 years ago, so I just haven't had the time to pick up as much historical knowledge/context as you, particularly pre-Geb era. I mentioned you specifically because once I argued that Kipchoge was better than Bekele and your argument changed my mind, and then last year I argued Bekele wouldn't beat Jakob in a championship 5k, and your argument made me completely rethink it, and I think last year I said something about Nuguse having the best American season ever, and you made me realize how great Steve Scott was back in the early 80s. Basically I was just using you as the wise old guy knocking some perspective into the dumb young kid, but idk now I've been thinking and maybe I don't care all that much about the history of the sport, and really only care about the old parts insofar as it relates to the modern day sport. I am bored to tears anytime Billy Mills gets brought up because Rupp would blow his doors off, but guys like Ryun and Bikila are super cool because I feel like they'd still be competitive today (and I support all barefoot runners).

Anyway, with all that aside, how many sub-3:29 runners have run the 5k at Worlds/the Olympics and not medaled? El G, Lagat, Jakob, Katir, and Farah all did. Idk of anyone else who tried it.

John Wesley Harding wrote:

Alright, I respect it. Everything you said here was reasonable, and I’m not just saying that because you flattered me in the 3rd paragraph, heh. I do think it’s a little weird how you’ve leaned into this attitude recently wherein you’re the spunky youngster taking your fresh, contemporary perspective to the old fogies (in their 30s, lol) still hung up on their heroes…but maybe to a degree it’s a bit of effective and harmless trolling.

As for your last paragraph, to bring us back to the point of the thread, I would say that looking at the 5 of the 16 sub-3:29 guys who medaled at 5k at some point in their careers is to be misguided by an extreme self-selection bias. I’m not saying it’s not worth noting, since obviously there’s a precedent there, but ~7 of those 16 (Kiprop, Ngeny, Cheruiyot, Makhloufi, Manangoi, Cacho, Baala) never competed seriously at 5k and it’s not because they wouldn’t have liked winning 5k medals. The one guy you missed who did race the 5k at a global championships is Abdelaati Iguider, who ran 3:28.79 and won two bronzes at 1500, and placed 6th in 2012 5k; he won a pair of DL races at 3,000, and ran one 12:59 in a race won in 12:53 but otherwise maxed out at 13:08 and sorta bombed in half the 5ks he raced.

I think Nuguse is a good comparison to Kerr, a very similar type of runner. Kerr is more successful but don’t get it twisted: Nuguse has run 3:43.97, 7:28, won a pair of DL 1500s, and closed in the same time for the final 200 behind Kerr in Glasgow this year…he’s practically reached the same level of fitness. Nuguse ran a respectable 13:02 at BU, but he couldn’t find another gear in the last 800 and Edwin Kurgat blasted him by 4.5 seconds—why assume Kerr would do better, let alone versus guys like Barega, Kejelcha, Aregawi, Kiplimo, Cheptegei, Jakob? Both Kerr and Nuguse were NCAA champions who were relative non-factors at 10k XC—in fact, Kerr placed 224th the year he ran at Nats.

When Kerr announced he was targeting the indoor 2 mile record, a lot of people were pointing to his lack of 5k success as evidence that 8:03 was a pipe dream, while I argued it could be possible without sub-13 5k ability. Since he ran 8:00, I’ve been arguing against those who assume that means he could run well under 13.

Thread:www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?th...

(For the record, I do think he could run faster than 13:07.5, but sub-13 is definitely still a big question mark. Nobody is sniffing a medal in Paris without sub-13 fitness, I promise.)

John Wesley Harding wrote:

Peach Pit wrote:

I'd like to think I'm a true student of the sport, but maybe I'm not. I don't have enough interest in stuff like the Coe/Cram/Ovett rivalry to memorize who won which medals and who ran what times. There are things I remember from reading about it/watching those races that have stuck with me, like one of them ran 3:46 with a crazy kick to set a longstanding WR, and I think it was Cram, but the quality of the performance matters SO much more to me than which one of them did it. Really what stuck with me from them was that it completely changed my beliefs on why white guys couldn't compete in distance events. Before learning about it, I thought Africans were just genetically better at running, but after finding out that 3 British guys from 40 years ago were better than any American ever (this was in 2020), I realized that it was more of an environmental thing than a genetic thing, and I know that belief still comes through in my posts today. I think that's even the argument I was making when I said "Coe and Cram and that other British guy from around then". I stand by the argument I was making, and no one has given me a convincing argument against it in the years that I've been making it.

But while I don't have much interest in Coe/Cram/Ovett, I have gone through thousands of pages on Letsrun (that's the 10 year difference btw, reading books vs reading online) by searching "Rupp" or "Webb" or "Simpson" or "Bekele" or "El G" or any other top runner from the last 25 years (plus any decent American), sorting from oldest to newest, and clicking through page after page because I loved learning what it was like to follow those athletes through the peaks and lulls in their careers. Historical context doesn't get much more objective than that. You also get to experience crazy shifts in opinion, I know it was jarring to me seeing how often Teg used to get mentioned before Rupp won silver, and now he's never brought up. I don't do it for pre-90s guys because it's just a bunch of posts speculating about how much faster an old guy could've run (the classic "Ryun is a 3:25 guy in todays spikes").

I thought the main difference is that you've seemingly been studying the sport since I was born (I'm 21), and I started following it 4 years ago, so I just haven't had the time to pick up as much historical knowledge/context as you, particularly pre-Geb era. I mentioned you specifically because once I argued that Kipchoge was better than Bekele and your argument changed my mind, and then last year I argued Bekele wouldn't beat Jakob in a championship 5k, and your argument made me completely rethink it, and I think last year I said something about Nuguse having the best American season ever, and you made me realize how great Steve Scott was back in the early 80s. Basically I was just using you as the wise old guy knocking some perspective into the dumb young kid, but idk now I've been thinking and maybe I don't care all that much about the history of the sport, and really only care about the old parts insofar as it relates to the modern day sport. I am bored to tears anytime Billy Mills gets brought up because Rupp would blow his doors off, but guys like Ryun and Bikila are super cool because I feel like they'd still be competitive today (and I support all barefoot runners).

Anyway, with all that aside, how many sub-3:29 runners have run the 5k at Worlds/the Olympics and not medaled? El G, Lagat, Jakob, Katir, and Farah all did. Idk of anyone else who tried it.

Alright, I respect it. Everything you said here was reasonable, and I’m not just saying that because you flattered me in the 3rd paragraph, heh. I do think it’s a little weird how you’ve leaned into this attitude recently wherein you’re the spunky youngster taking your fresh, contemporary perspective to the old fogies (in their 30s, lol) still hung up on their heroes…but maybe to a degree it’s a bit of effective and harmless trolling.

As for your last paragraph, to bring us back to the point of the thread, I would say that looking at the 5 of the 16 sub-3:29 guys who medaled at 5k at some point in their careers is to be misguided by an extreme self-selection bias. I’m not saying it’s not worth noting, since obviously there’s a precedent there, but ~7 of those 16 (Kiprop, Ngeny, Cheruiyot, Makhloufi, Manangoi, Cacho, Baala) never competed seriously at 5k and it’s not because they wouldn’t have liked winning 5k medals. The one guy you missed who did race the 5k at a global championships is Abdelaati Iguider, who ran 3:28.79 and won two bronzes at 1500, and placed 6th in 2012 5k; he won a pair of DL races at 3,000, and ran one 12:59 in a race won in 12:53 but otherwise maxed out at 13:08 and sorta bombed in half the 5ks he raced.

I think Nuguse is a good comparison to Kerr, a very similar type of runner. Kerr is more successful but don’t get it twisted: Nuguse has run 3:43.97, 7:28, won a pair of DL 1500s, and closed in the same time for the final 200 behind Kerr in Glasgow this year…he’s practically reached the same level of fitness. Nuguse ran a respectable 13:02 at BU, but he couldn’t find another gear in the last 800 and Edwin Kurgat blasted him by 4.5 seconds—why assume Kerr would do better, let alone versus guys like Barega, Kejelcha, Aregawi, Kiplimo, Cheptegei, Jakob? Both Kerr and Nuguse were NCAA champions who were relative non-factors at 10k XC—in fact, Kerr placed 224th the year he ran at Nats.

When Kerr announced he was targeting the indoor 2 mile record, a lot of people were pointing to his lack of 5k success as evidence that 8:03 was a pipe dream, while I argued it could be possible without sub-13 5k ability. Since he ran 8:00, I’ve been arguing against those who assume that means he could run well under 13.

Thread:www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?th...

(For the record, I do think he could run faster than 13:07.5, but sub-13 is definitely still a big question mark. Nobody is sniffing a medal in Paris without sub-13 fitness, I promise.)

John Wesley Harding wrote:

Alright, I respect it. Everything you said here was reasonable, and I’m not just saying that because you flattered me in the 3rd paragraph, heh. I do think it’s a little weird how you’ve leaned into this attitude recently wherein you’re the spunky youngster taking your fresh, contemporary perspective to the old fogies (in their 30s, lol) still hung up on their heroes…but maybe to a degree it’s a bit of effective and harmless trolling.

As for your last paragraph, to bring us back to the point of the thread, I would say that looking at the 5 of the 16 sub-3:29 guys who medaled at 5k at some point in their careers is to be misguided by an extreme self-selection bias. I’m not saying it’s not worth noting, since obviously there’s a precedent there, but ~7 of those 16 (Kiprop, Ngeny, Cheruiyot, Makhloufi, Manangoi, Cacho, Baala) never competed seriously at 5k and it’s not because they wouldn’t have liked winning 5k medals. The one guy you missed who did race the 5k at a global championships is Abdelaati Iguider, who ran 3:28.79 and won two bronzes at 1500, and placed 6th in 2012 5k; he won a pair of DL races at 3,000, and ran one 12:59 in a race won in 12:53 but otherwise maxed out at 13:08 and sorta bombed in half the 5ks he raced.

I think Nuguse is a good comparison to Kerr, a very similar type of runner. Kerr is more successful but don’t get it twisted: Nuguse has run 3:43.97, 7:28, won a pair of DL 1500s, and closed in the same time for the final 200 behind Kerr in Glasgow this year…he’s practically reached the same level of fitness. Nuguse ran a respectable 13:02 at BU, but he couldn’t find another gear in the last 800 and Edwin Kurgat blasted him by 4.5 seconds—why assume Kerr would do better, let alone versus guys like Barega, Kejelcha, Aregawi, Kiplimo, Cheptegei, Jakob? Both Kerr and Nuguse were NCAA champions who were relative non-factors at 10k XC—in fact, Kerr placed 224th the year he ran at Nats.

When Kerr announced he was targeting the indoor 2 mile record, a lot of people were pointing to his lack of 5k success as evidence that 8:03 was a pipe dream, while I argued it could be possible without sub-13 5k ability. Since he ran 8:00, I’ve been arguing against those who assume that means he could run well under 13.

Thread:www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?th...

(For the record, I do think he could run faster than 13:07.5, but sub-13 is definitely still a big question mark. Nobody is sniffing a medal in Paris without sub-13 fitness, I promise.)